Deutsche Telekom Says T-Mobile To Get Apple Products (Updated)

"T-Mobile USA has entered into an agreement with Apple to bring products to market together next year," the company said in a long press release providing a financial update from the German telco.

"In the coming year, T-Mobile USA will continue to reinforce its market presence with additions to its rate plan and product portfolio, including Apple products," the company added.

"Following on from the preceding steps such as the spectrum swap with Verizon, the towers deal with Crown Castle and the transaction with MetroPCS that we have announced, we have now added the final piece to the jigsaw to boost the competitiveness of T-Mobile USA sustainably," Deutsche Telekom Chairman René Obermann said in the release.

Deutsche Telekom made the announcement in connection with a meeting with investors and analysts. Among other things, the company said it plans to invest $4 billion this year on building out its LTE network.

Update: Stifel Nicolaus analyst Aaron Rakers points out in a brief research note that the company indicated that the deal will result in lower free cash flow and reduced dividends from Deutsche Telekom.

"T-Mobile exited the September quarter with approximately 27.8 million contract subscribers, which is up slightly from 27.6 million in the prior quarter and up from 26.8 million in the year ago quarter," Rakers notes. "In terms of smartphone subscribers, T-Mobile noted that of the 27.8 million total contract subscribers, 15.6 million were smartphone customers. This compares to 16.6 million (i.e., declining due to a lack of iPhone support) and 12.1 in the prior and year ago quarters, respectively. As a reference, since launching the iPhone at Verizon in the March 2011 quarter, iPhone captures approximately 50% of Verizon’s total smartphone activations (vs. ~77% on average over the past four quarters at AT&T). Since the launch of the iPhone at Sprint, Apple’s iPhone shipments has trended between 1.8-1.5M shipments per quarter; Sprint having ~55M mobile phone subscribers at the time of launch."

Update: As some readers pointed out, contrary to my original headline, the release refers only to selling "products" together, but does not specify the iPhone 5 or any other product.